Catholic Conscience Betrayed

Ever since Pope Paul VI issued his encyclical, Humanae Vitae, Catholic dissidents have tried their hardest to misrepresent the teaching, debunk the teaching, or generally confuse Catholics from one end of this country to the other. In fact, one might say that the confusion over this teaching is worldwide.

But today the crisis the Catholic Church confronts due to the Obama mandate on contraception, sterilization, and abortion is a result of the Church’s failure to teach Humanae Vitae with the loving charity intended by Pope Paul VI.

One of the best efforts we have seen to tie all the loose ends together is an in-depth analysis written by Pennsylvania pro-life advocate Joseph Tevington. Joe, as his friends know him, lives in Morrisville, Pennsylvania, and is a certified rehabilitation counselor specializing in services to the deaf. He has a master’s degree in deafness rehabilitation and has a second master’s degree in religious studies from St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Philadelphia. In addition, Mr. Tevington has a catechetical diploma from the Sacred Congregation for Clergy.

Tevington’s concerns are rooted in the disastrous situations he has documented in Catholic hospitals in the state of Pennsylvania. He has carefully analyzed the problematic nature of actions in those facilities that are anything but Catholic—including the unbridled provision of contraception, which includes the abortive morning-after pill.

Along with the rest of us, Tevington wonders if Catholic bureaucrats at the USCCB are shying away from exposing the early abortion nature of the pill, the IUD, and other forms of chemical contraception because, in many ways, the Catholic healthcare entities they claim to be defending have dirty hands. Tevington cites Leonard J. Nelson who quotes Sister Carol Keehan, president of the Catholic Health Association (CHA). She states that Catholic hospitals view the Ethical Religious Directives (ERDs) as merely a part of their mission, adding in some cases that hospitals have a “broader” mission.

One is left wondering if that explanation is the precise reason why such facilities frequently ignore Catholic healthcare guidelines, including the ERDs to which they are supposed to adhere.

On a related topic, we see the inability of those speaking for Catholic healthcare in general to refer their opponents to the Vatican’s clear statement on the abortive nature of the morning-after pill, often preferring to dodge the question or even deny outright that the morning-after pill can abort babies. There are a number of medical studies as well as Vatican statements—including one by Chris Kahlenborn and associates—that make the same air-tight case regarding the modes of action of morning-after pills.

As Tevington comments at the close of his analysis,

When we do not shy away from the destructiveness of abortifacients/contraceptives, our arguments and witness can be enormously more effective. A case in point is the response to a 6/6/12 piece in the NY Times, which had maintained that: “Leading scientists say studies . . . provide strong evidence that Plan B does not prevent implantation, and no proof that a newer type of pill, Ella, does. . . . Controversy over emergency contraception is figuring in the presidential race and debates over the Obama administration’s healthcare law.”

Many experts responded with factual information exposing where the New York Times had gone awry by using the facts to debunk the phony sham which the Times has consistently preached as fact. Among them is Pharmacist for Life International’s president Karen Brauer, who wrote:

Laughably entertaining is the suggestion that there is no time for levonorgestrel [clinical name for morning-after pill] to affect thickness or receptivity of the uterine lining, but there is time for it to always work by delaying ovulation. Scroll back up to the lifespan of the gametes and THEN ponder that it takes about 7 days for the early human embryo to travel down the fallopian tubes into the uterus and implant in the uterine lining.

Seven days is not long enough for the morning-after pill to affect feedback inhibition, transport, endometrial tissue, and implantation processes, yet 48 hours is claimed to be long enough to exert a perfect 100 percent mechanism for delaying ovulation so that sperm and “egg” don’t meet. (Remember when a woman is most fertile, the day of and the day after ovulation?) It’s pathetic when leftist ideology replaces scientific analysis and inquiry in such a blatantly obvious manner.

The bottom line in this discussion is becoming painfully clear. The Catholic healthcare professional who has not backed away from telling the truth about contraceptives, sterilization, and abortion may well be mandated to either compromise his conscience or depart his beloved profession.

Why? Because nobody, including the USCCB, can speak with a forked tongue and not expect politicians like Barack Obama to drive a Mack truck right down the middle of the duplicity.

Avoiding the truth contained in the teachings of the Church does not protect conscience. Not now, not ever!